LITMIR.BIZ

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loneliness. It had to do with hoping to find The One without the time pressure of a biological clock. If I was aware enough to know that a child would be no cure-all for a lack of male companionship, I truly believed, in an astoundingly naive way, that I could simply do things backward: child first, soul mate later. But as hard as it was to meet The One before I became a parent, I hadn’t anticipated that once you have a baby alone, not only do you age about ten years in the first ten months, but if you don’t have time to shower, eat, urinate in a timely manner, or even leave the house except for work, where you spend every waking moment that your child is at day care, there’s very little chance that a man—much less The One—is going to knock on your door and join that party.

      And then there’s the question of where you even meet single men once you’re a parent. They’re certainly not at toddler birthday parties or Gymboree, and the few I’d see at the grocery store weren’t exactly looking to pick up a mom singing “Apples and Bananas” to entertain the toddler sitting in the basket. (If the genders were reversed, of course, female shoppers would be all over that single dad.)

      The loneliness I experienced after having a child wasn’t diminished; it was different and perhaps even compounded. It’s both single-person loneliness, and the loneliness of not sharing the little moments of my son’s life with the one person who cares about him as profoundly as I do.

      But saying this aloud makes people uncomfortable. I remember getting an e-mail from a never-married single mom like me who told me that when she shared her loneliness on a single-mom listserve, people told her to stop feeling sorry for herself and to “get a life.” One woman even suggested that if she was so unhappy being a single mom, she should put her child in foster care.

      “I got flamed for saying I get lonely sometimes,” this single mom told me. “But nobody flamed this other woman for telling me to put my kid in foster care!”

      What’s so hard to accept about loneliness and desire for connection? Is there really something wrong with our self-esteem or our values if we want someone to share the literal and metaphorical driving with? We’re so worried about not “settling,” but then we find ourselves unhappily “unsettled”—living in our single-person apartments, eating takeout for dinner in front of the TV, and hoping for a guy to show up so we can “settle down.”

      When I asked several women what “feminism” meant, I got a lot of responses that boiled down to having the same opportunities as men. But the more we talked, the more we came up against the fact that our needs are different and that we might not, in fact, want the same things. And when it comes to dating, we don’t have the same opportunities as men, especially as we get older.

      This might seem obvious, but somehow I thought that I could just have a baby on my own, put my dating life on hold for a year or two, and then get right back in the game. I thought that’s what “equality” and “having it all” meant.

      Then, when I was ready to date again, I went to a Thursday night speed dating event. I was now over 40 and everything had changed.

      Let me tell you about that Thursday night.

4 Speed Dating Disaster

      I’d heard about speed dating for years, but this was my first attempt at actually sitting down with complete strangers for five minutes each before rating them on a scorecard. It may sound like an odd way of meeting mates, but what the format lacks in substance, I figured it would make up for in volume and efficiency. You basically go on ten mini blind dates in the span of an hour. If, when the evening is over, you check “yes” next to a guy’s name—and he checks “yes” next to yours—you’re given each other’s contact information to continue the conversation later.

      The event I chose that Thursday night was for singles 40 to 50 years old. At 41, I could have signed up for the 30-to-40 group—the speed dating company said there’s a one-year grace period—but I figured I’d stick with guys my own age.

      As I got dressed for the event, I was kind of excited. After all, I’d get to meet ten new single men, which was a lot more than the zero single men I was meeting during a typical day of working from home. I thought it would be fun to “get out there” again, even if I didn’t find a romantic connection. How bad could it be?

       A PLANE BROUGHT ME HERE

      At 7 p.m., I arrived at a trendy restaurant near the beach where, in a private corner, two-top tables were arranged in rows. Nine other women—seven of them appearing to be no older than 42—were already there. Six had a male counterpart seated across from them. That was the first surprise: There were only six available men for ten available women.

      I checked out the six men. Surprise #2: All but one looked older than 50, and one guy looked so old that he bore a striking resemblance to my best friend’s father. (So much for the one-year grace period.) So there we were: eight early-fortyish women, two late-fortyish women, one mid-fortyish man, and five men over 50. We were instructed to get to know the person seated across from us until we heard the bell, then the men would move one chair over to the next table.

      Seats were assigned. The bell dinged and it was time to begin.

      My Guy #1 was Sam. He was bald and wrinkled and wearing a plaid sportcoat with patches on the elbows. We had just five minutes to chat, but after the first minute, I wondered how I was going to make it through the next four. It started off innocently enough. “Are you from Los Angeles?” he asked. I smiled and said that, yes, I’m a local, and then I asked where he was from. New York.

      “Oh,” I said, trying to make the best of the fact that I was sitting across from someone who looked like a grandpa in Vegas. “So, what brought you to the West Coast?”

      “A plane,” he replied, barely containing his grin, like he was the first person ever to make this joke. I smiled weakly. There was a long pause.

      “Actually, it’s a very long story,” he continued, despite the fact that this was “speed” dating. A simple “I liked the weather” or “I moved out here for college” or “There was a job opportunity” would have sufficed. Instead, he told me about how he doesn’t get along with his family, so he moved as far away from them as he could; how he couldn’t finish his Ph.D. because his dissertation advisor had a heart attack; how he tried to transfer schools but he didn’t get in; how he moved in with this woman he thought he would marry, but then she left him for another guy; how he ended up working for a temp agency, and how that didn’t work out because … ding. Thankfully, the bell rang and it was time for him to move to the next table.

      Guy #2 was Paul. Paul was another grandpa (thinning gray hair, turkey chin). When I asked what kind of work he does, he told me he was “in transition.” I asked what he was transitioning from—and to. He said he used to work as a teacher, which he loved, but he hated the politics so now he was playing a lot of golf. He’d really like to move from his cramped one-bedroom rental, but since he wasn’t working, he couldn’t afford a two-bedroom. He wanted to change careers, but it’s hard when you’re 55 because employers only want to hire “youngsters” these days. He was in the middle of a tirade about the principal at his school when I heard the blessed ding. The next guy sat down.

      Guy #3 was Sandy. He was cute and the youngest guy there—mid-forties, maybe. “Everyone asks me what Sandy is short for,” he said the second we made eye contact, even though I’d asked no such thing. “It’s short for Sanford. You know, like Sandy Koufax. The baseball player? His name was Sanford, too. Sanford Koufax.”

      He smiled proudly. Sandy was a speed dating veteran. He said he’d been doing it for years. He told a lot of jokes that sounded like he’d been telling them for years. He had terrible grammar, and each time he made a mistake, he asked me what the correct word was—“you know, you being a writer and all.” He was a sweet guy, in a little-boy kind of way, but we were like oil and water, and after five minutes of his shtick, I was eager for the ding.

      Guy #4 was Roger.

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